Thailand Immigration Detention

Thailand hosts more than four million migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. Officials have broad discretionary powers to place non-citizens in detention and there is no detention time limit. Severe overcrowding is endemic at detention facilities and conditions are reportedly abysmal, including for the thousands of foreign children who are detained annually.

Quick Facts

Thailand Immigration Detention Profile

Thailand is an important destination for migrant workers and asylum seekers from across the Greater Mekong Delta region as well other parts of Asia. Like many of its neighbours, Thailand is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and does not have a formal asylum framework in place. Asylum seekers and refugees are generally treated as unauthorized immigrants, charged with crimes, and sent to detention centres. Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar are particularly vulnerable to arrest and detention as are Christian asylum seekers from Pakistan.[1]

Thailand hosts approximately four million international migrants, an estimated 1.5 million of whom are undocumented.[2] Approximately 80 percent of the migrants and asylum seekers in the country are from Myanmar while the remaining 20 percent come mainly from Laos and Cambodia. The country has undertaken various regularization and registration operations since the early 2000s within the framework of bilateral labour agreements with Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Nearly 1.6 million irregular migrants (including dependents) were registered during a four-month period in 2014.[3]

Despite these regularization exercises, both documented and undocumented migrant workers and asylum seekers remain at risk of arrest, detention, and deportation, as advocacy groups like the Mekong Migration Network have documented.[4] Migration policies in Thailand often lead to confusion and migrant workers live under the constant threat of deportation.[5] This is due to several factors, including dependency on a single employer, costly and complicated bureaucratic procedures, restrictions on freedom movement, as well as police corruption and collusion with traffickers.[6]

Some 110,000 Myanmar refugees have been allowed to stay in nine camps on the Thai-Myanmar border by executive discretion. There is also an unverified number of refugees and asylum seekers from dozens of other countries, who reside outside camps.[7] There are often long delays in processing asylum claims, which for those living outside official refugee camps can mean extended periods in immigration detention while awaiting resettlement.[8]

Thailand’s treatment of Rohingyas has been widely condemned. In 2013, after the Myanmar government refused to accept Rohingyas being deported from Thailand, journalists uncovered a secret Thai Royal Police policy called “option two,” which was reportedly designed “to remove Rohingya refugees from Thailand's immigration detention centres and deliver them to human traffickers waiting at sea.”[9] Reporters interviewed Rohingyas who had been sold to human traffickers by immigration officials and quoted official sources who said that of the two thousand Rohingyas held in Thai detention centres as of early October 2013 only 154 Rohingyas remained in detention some two months later.[10] Since these initial reports were published there have numerous reports by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and others documenting mass graves at camps run by migrant traffickers in Thailand.[11]

More recently, in early 2016, there were numerous reports concering the mistreatment of Christian asylum seekers from Pakistan. A January 2016 article in the Christian Post reported that a 30-year-old Pakistiani Christian woman died in Thai police custody on "Christmas Eve after she was arrested and prevented from taking much needed medications." The article cited a British Pakistani Christian Association that claimed Thai authorities had launched "a crackdown against Pakistani Christians who've overstayed their visas in Thailand." A February 2016 BBCreport stated that those arrested in the raids were being charged with "illegal immigration, fined 4,000 Baht (£90), and then sent to Bangkok's Immigration Detention Centre."

The Immigration Act, B.E. 2522 (1979), provides police officers and immigration officials broad discretionary powers to detain foreigners. The law does not set a maximum length of time that a person can remain in administrative immigration detention.

The Immigration Act also criminalizes unauthorized stay, which is punishable by up to two years imprisonment. The Ministry of Justice’s Department of Corrections is responsible for monitoring prison and detention facility conditions, however its mandate does not include administrative detainees. The Immigration Police Bureau of the Royal Thai Police administers the country’s approximately 15 dedicated immigration detention centres (IDCs), which are spread out across Thailand’s land borders and along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Thailand.[12] The detention centres are not subject to many of the regulations that govern the regular prison system. As a result, both the procedures and conditions of immigration detention can vary greatly.[13]

The costs of deportation are to be covered by the person being deported, a policy that the Global Detention Project has found common in other countries as well (for example, in Lebanon and Egypt). In addition, as in Australia,[14] immigration detainees in Thailand have to pay for the cost of detention, leading to an increased likelihood of lengthy or indefinite detention.[15] Human rights groups have emphasized that this is a discriminatory practice that contravenes international human rights norms and standards.[16]

Although there are no official statistics on the numbers of people placed in immigration detention, human rights groups have attempted to document the prevalence of certain practices, like the detention of children. According to HRW, “approximately 100 children per year are detained on a long-term basis (that is, for a period of longer than one month). Meanwhile, at least 4,000 children are thought to move through the immigration detention system each year for shorter periods (days or weeks).”[17]

In 2012, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reminded Thailand that children should only be deprived of liberty as a last resort and for as short a time as possible. The committee also underscored that when children are detained they must be confined separately from adults and in “a safe, child sensitive environment” that enables regular contact with their families.” The committee urged Thailand to “Promote alternative measures to detention such as diversion, probation, counselling, community service or suspended sentences, wherever possible.”[18]

According to a 2014 Amnesty International report, official regulations in Thailand allow for cell sizes in detention centres to be a minimum of 1.19 metres per person, “which does not allow detainees to lie down to sleep.”[19] HRW has also reported on the abysmal conditions in detention centres, “including severe overcrowding, putrid sanitation, and an atmosphere of violence.” Detainees have repeatedly complained of overcrowding and extremely poor hygiene. In 2013, journalists found 276 male Rohingyas detained in two small “cages” meant to hold no more than 15 people at the Phang Nga detention centre on the coast of the Strait of Malacca.[20] At the time, Thai authorities acknowledged that they were “aware of the overcrowding issue at the existing immigration facilities” and that alternative arrangements were being made. According to the journalists, the head of Thailand’s parliamentary Border Affairs Committee commented that “The conditions you have seen would even be difficult for animals.”

International agencies and organisations have been given access to immigration detention centres (IDCs), including the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which carried out “The first immunization programme for Myanmar Muslims from Rakhine State and Bangladeshis in all IDCs and Shelters” in October 2015. According to an IOM report, “Myanmar Muslims from Rakhine State in Phang-Nga IDC conducted two series of hunger strikes to express their frustration at their period of detention.”[21] Human Rights Watch has asked IOM to provide more reports immigration detention in Thailand and urged UNHCR officials to “intervene promptly to seek the immediate release of refugees and asylum seekers when they are arrested.”[22]

[1] United Nations High Commissionner for Refugees. 2015 UNHCR country operations profile – Thailand. http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e489646.html; BBC, "The Christians held in Thailand after fleeing Pakistan," 26 February 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35654804.

[2] Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, United Nations, International Migration 2015 Wallchart, http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/migration/migration-wallchart-2013.shtml, United Nations, 20135.

CRC, [Third] Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child establishing a communications procedure, 2011

2012

UN Treaty Collection

CEDAW, Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, 1999

2000

UN Treaty Collection

Ratio of complaints procedures accepted

Number

Observation Date

2/7

2/7

Relevant recommendations issued by treaty bodies Show sources

Name

Recommendation Excerpt

Recommendation Year

Human Rights Committee

§ 30. The State party should:
(a) Refrain from detaining refugees, asylum seekers and migrants and implement alternatives to detention, including before deportation. In cases where the individual is detained, the State party should ensure that the detention is based on individual circumstances that are reasonable, necessary and proportionate, and that the cases are reassessed over time. There should also be effective access to judicial review;
(b) Ensure that children are not deprived of liberty except as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time, taking into account their best interests as a primary concern, and that they are segregated from adult detainees who are not their family members;
(c) Ensure that the living conditions in immigration detention centres are in compliance with the Covenant.

§71"the Committee recommends that the State party treat the asylum-seekers and refugees according to their status and do not subject them to detention or deportations to a country where their lives might be in danger. In this regard, the Committee encourages the State party to seek technical assistance from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The Committee also recommends that the State party ratify the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol and establish a national legal and institutional framework for protection of refugees." § 80 [...] (a) Raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to an internationally acceptable age and in no circumstances below the age of 12 years; (b) Ensure that children deprived of liberty are held in detention only as a last resort and for as short a time as possible and that their detention is carried out in compliance with the law; (c) Ensure that children are detained separately from adults as recommended by the Working Group under the universal periodic review, that they have a safe, child sensitive environment and that they maintain regular contact with their families; (d)Promote alternative measures to detention such as diversion, probation, counselling, community service or suspended sentences, wherever possible;"

Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially in women and children

"72. [...] corruption in law enforcement, particularly at the provincial and local levels, is deep rooted and has diluted the efficacy of Government policies and programmes in combating human trafficking. As a result, many trafficked persons are not properly identified, leading to cases of wanton arrest, detention and deportation throughout the country [...] §74 [---] The Special Rapporteur has serious concerns that the stay in the shelters amounts to detention and, in addition to infringing fundamental human rights relating to freedom of movement and protection from arbitrary detention, presents a risk to the well-being of trafficked persons [...] §77(p) "ensure that raids and rescue operations are victim-centred and do not cause any discriminatory impact on victims and those who are not victims of trafficking. upon being rescued, trafficked persons should be provided with information about their rights and appropriate counsel ling in a language they understand. further more , in accordance with the a nti-trafficking in persons act, victims should not be criminalized or penalized, including through detention for status-related offences such as violations of immigration laws and other crimes that directly result from their situations as trafficked persons ;

Additional Resources

This article critically assesses a range of new non-state actors who have become involved in the deprivation of liberty of migrants and asylum seekers, describes the various forces that appear to be driving their engagement, and makes a series of recommendations concerning the role of non-state actors and detention in global efforts to manage international migration.

Immigration Detention in Thailand

February 2016

Thailand hosts more than four million migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. Officials have broad discretionary powers to place non-citizens in detention and there is no detention time limit. Severe overcrowding is endemic at detention facilities and conditions are reportedly abysmal, including for the thousands of foreign children who are detained annually.

There and Back Again: On the Diffusion of Immigration Detention

July 2014

From Mexico to the Bahamas, Mauritania to Lebanon, Turkey to Saudi Arabia, South Africa to Indonesia, Malaysia to Thailand, immigration-related detention has become an established policy apparatus that counts on dedicated facilities and burgeoning institutional bureaucracies. Until relatively recently, however, detention appears to have been largely an ad hoc tool, employed mainly by wealthy states in exigent circumstances. This paper uses concepts from diffusion theory to detail the history of key policy events in several important immigration destination countries that led to the spreading of detention practices during the last 30 years and assesses some of the motives that appear to have encouraged this phenomenon.